Computer crash affected 8.5 million computers, according to Microsoft

Microsoft said in a blog post on Saturday that the worldwide computer outage that affected airports, banks, and many other services in numerous countries last Friday impacted 8.5 million Windows operating computers.

"We currently estimate that the (cybersecurity program) CrowdStrike update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all machines running Windows," the U.S. group said.

The disruption was caused by an update to the CrowdStrike software that was incompatible with the Windows operating system, the world's most popular operating system.

"Although the percentage was small, the significant economic and social impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by companies that manage many vital services," Microsoft added.

Due to the CrowdStrike software failure, which spread around the world, thousands of flights had to be canceled, and the operation of numerous hospitals, state agencies, factories and television stations, among others, was disrupted.

David Weston, vice president of Microsoft, noted on the blog that the incident was "beyond the scope" of his company.

He detailed his company's steps, such as deploying hundreds of engineers and experts to help organizations affected by the virtual outage.

"CrowdStrike helped us develop a large-scale deployable solution that will enable Microsoft's Azure infrastructure (cloud service, ndlr) to accelerate remediation of the faulty upgrade," he detailed.

Microsoft, world number two in cloud technology behind Amazon and ahead of Google, also said it has worked with its two main competitors to share information about the impact of the problem on its sector.

"This incident demonstrates the interconnected nature of our vast ecosystem: global cloud providers, software, cybersecurity companies and other software vendors, and customers," explained David Weston.